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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we just heard in our last segment, you might have to go to law school just to figure out how to go to elementary school right now. As it happens, today is the first day of school in New York City and the teachers' union has joined other city workers in a lawsuit over forcing people back in person too soon. There's also what some parents are calling a safety strike for a remote learning option, we'll see how many families participate. School started last week in most of New Jersey. An article in POLITICO is headlined; COVID Turning New Jersey's Nonpartisan School Boards Into Political Lightning Rods. Then there's the flood damage from Hurricane Ida.

Let's check-in now with WNYC education reporter, Jessica Gould, and POLITICO New Jersey education reporter, Carly Sitrin. Hi, Jessica. Thanks for coming back on the show. Carly, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Jessica Gould: Hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, and I think we have to reconnect Carly's line. We'll get her up in just a minute. Jess, it's not even eleven o'clock on the first day of school in the city, so maybe it's an unfair question but how's it going so far? Any news to report?

Jessica Gould: Yes, I can tell you a little bit about how the day started. It feels like it's later, to me at least. That may be because I didn't sleep much last night because I have a little one going off, so we have jitters too. It was pretty chaotic outside school today. There were big crowds of people as we were trying to fill out our health screening forms, the online portal went down, so it was very confusing how to say that you were feeling healthy and don't have COVID. Then it did come back on for some people and then there were paper forms that you could fill out.

There have been long lines everywhere for kids getting in and I've heard there's been some snags uploading vaccination status for older kids and some problems with buses, which is actually par for the course every year. I'm just hearing a mix of real excitement and also anxiety from both parents and kids. That's the status so far today.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned the website and we already have a tweet from at least one listener. Let's see if I can pull this up. Well, so many tweets are coming in about our last segment and already about this one that I don't even have it in front of me anymore but it was basically like, "Looking forward to Brian Lehrer's education segment so we can talk about the massive fail of the education website portal." Can you talk a little bit more about that and what people are actually supposed to enter on that website before they can bring their little ones to school and what the status of that is right now?

Jessica Gould: Yes, you're basically supposed to say whether you've been exposed to COVID or have any symptoms, and it was just really hard to fill it out online because there was so much demand and the school's chancellor and the mayor said, "Well, this is what happens when nearly a million families are going online to do the same thing at once." You could make the point that maybe they should have anticipated that and fixed it before we all were trying to get into school this morning.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. By the way, one addendum to a previous segment talking about the Texas abortion ban and the bounty hunter aspect of that listener tweet, and it's so good, I had to interrupt this segment to put it on the air. Listener tweets, "Can Texas mothers sue bounty hunters for child support?" We will just leave that there for your consideration and go back to the school's topic we're doing now. Carly Sitrin, welcome to WNYC. We have you now, right?

Carly Sitrin: Yes. Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Your article on POLITICO New Jersey is called COVID Turning New Jersey's Nonpartisan School Boards Into Political Lightning Rods. What are the main flashpoints?

Carly Sitrin: I think it's been a really interesting process. The way things started was a lot of tension around reopening back last year and whether or not schools were ready for kids to go back. That's morphed over the past few months into debates over mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and then expanded into this national conversation around teaching racism in schools, and LGBTQ+ curriculum as well.

Brian Lehrer: Do the issues include some of what we've started to talk about regarding New York City remote options for families and vaccine mandates for teachers?

Carly Sitrin: I think it's been a little less controversial. In New Jersey, Governor Murphy did announce a vaccine mandate, vaccine or test policy for all teachers and he said that overwhelmingly, teachers are pretty much on board with that. In terms of virtual option though, Murphy has said there is no virtual remote option for New Jersey students going back to school, which has freaked some people out, understandably, but I think everyone is at this wait-and-see. We're holding our breath to see if everything goes off smoothly and maybe there is a future in which we don't need a remote option. I guess at this point, we're just really waiting to see what case numbers start looking like.

Brian Lehrer: In New Jersey's second week of school, are there many school safety strikes, as some advocates call them? Keeping kids home or teachers staying home to protest universal in-person requirements?

Carly Sitrin: I don't think I've really seen any widespread effort in that regard but I think what's unique about New York, New Jersey specifically is, even if these protests were kind of gearing up, the remnants of Ida really knocked everyone back a bit and quelled I think some of that unsettlement and protest just because folks lost so much and school buildings were really impacted by the storm waters that there was a sense of, "I don't know that we can take much more at this point," especially for families in North and Central Jersey that were hit especially hard.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting. The two controversies or two of the controversies intersect with each other in your reporting on the first week of school, that is the vaccine mandates or may be based on our last segment, I should call them vaccine ultimatums. You don't have to get a vaccine but if you choose not to, you can't work in public environments like public schools, that the vaccine requirement or ultimatum is making parents who might have wanted to keep their kids all remote, more comfortable with going back into the class?

Carly Sitrin: I think so, and what a few people have said to me that actually makes a sort of sense is, some teachers or school leaders have said to me if you're a parent who is diametrically opposed to these mask mandates or vaccine mandates or in any way you don't want to conform, why not pull your student out for home-schooling or send them to a different situation? Folks have said maybe that clears up some space in overcrowded classrooms. Maybe that makes classes safer overall. Maybe there is a reality in which if you're never going to get on board with these mandates, it's better for everyone if you think about a different situation for your child.

Brian Lehrer: Wow, it's almost like saying, "Oh, yes, you don't like it, go and home school," like almost with some hostility.

Carly Sitrin: Yes, it depends on the person. I think there is some hostility and some hurt feelings for sure with some teachers and parents, but I do think the large percentage in New Jersey, the majority, we've just been through so much as a state and as a community that there is a feeling that we're all in this together. While there is a vocal minority of folks who are really opposed politically or whatever else, they are a minority, and it can be hard to remember that if they're being very vocal on social media, on Facebook, through newsletters, but they are a minority and I think folks here are really trying to remember that.

Brian Lehrer: Good point. Of course, the vaccine requirements, vaccine rules, whatever we want to call them, don't protect from kid-to-kid transmissions, especially in age groups where vaccines aren't available. Listeners, help us report the story of the first day of school in New York City or the second week of school anywhere in New Jersey. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Parents, how's it going for your child, or teachers, for your school? Anyone on what's been called a school safety strike this morning in New York City day one? Tell us what you know, tell us what you're experiencing or ask any question of WNYC's Jessica Gould covering the New York City schools or Carly Sitrin covering the schools in New Jersey for POLITICO.

646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or continue to tweet @BrianLehrer. Jessica, your article on Gothamist on Saturday was headlined; When New York City Schools Reopen Monday, Some Parents Plan To Sit It Out. What parents, how many, and why?

Jessica Gould: I've heard from multiple parents who are saying that they don't feel safe sending their kids to school. They don't feel confident in the safety measures and they either want to wait a little bit, a few days or a few weeks to see if there are outbreaks, or they just plan to homeschool. There are some parents that I talked to who had been telling me for weeks that they weren't going to send their kids because they were scared and they didn't feel safe. Then at the last minute, in the past few days or even last night, they decided to send their kids in, but there's definitely a population of people who've been very vocal who want a remote option.

For the parents who are keeping their kids home, there's the option of getting, if you qualify, a medical accommodation for home instruction but that's been really hard for parents to access and to be granted. As of Friday, I knew of parents who had applied and they said we hope to get back to you by Monday. Then you can homeschool, but there are some parents who are not signed up for either at the moment. There's concerns that they then may be contacted by the Administration for Children's Services for educational neglect if they don't send their kids to school.

Brian Lehrer: Are there demographic breakdowns on this yet, Jessica? In the last school year, as you know, two-thirds of the parents chose to keep their kids all remote even after they have the choice of sending them back as late as the spring, and lower-income parents, parents of color as well, chose remote at a higher rate, right?

Jessica Gould: Right. I don't have numbers but I can tell you that from the interviews I've done, a lot of the people who don't feel safe sending their kids to school are of color. I talked to Black families and I talked to some Asian American families. In both cases, it was an intersection of not trusting the COVID precautions and also feeling like there are other threats to their safety when they send their kids to school, either racism in the classroom, the feeling of having school safety agents patrol, or, for the Asian American community, I heard some people who didn't want to send their kids on the subway because of the attacks that there have been.

I would guess that it would likely track what we saw last year, which was that more families of color, more lower-income families who are more likely to experience Coronavirus are going to be the ones staying home, but it may be a very small population ultimately, and that's what we're going to be looking for in the coming days.

Brian Lehrer: Carly says it is a very small population in New Jersey after about a week of school, a very vocal minority on social media keeping the debate prominent, but not many parents actually going for that. We'll see what happens in the city beyond this morning which is just the first morning. All right. Report from drop-off, Marie on the front lines of drop-off in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Marie.

Marie: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I just tuned in right at the beginning of the segment and I'm responding to that little bit. Just as I said to the screener, we were really happy to be sending our son to school in person, and yes, there were long lines, yes, he couldn't get on the portal. He did it the entire walk to school, he finally got on. When I first turned the segment on, that's what I heard being reported on. The portal shut down, there's long lines, there's confusion, and I just feel like that's all to be expected. I just hope we all just don't start complaining about that.

As I said to the screener, I'm just trying to keep things in perspective. Maybe it was just celebrating, not celebrating, honoring the 20th anniversary of 9/11, which we lived through with my oldest son being in the hospital during that time. With COVID, we had a few deaths in the family, we all got COVID. We have a family friend who we heard passed away this week. Just trying to keep things in perspective, and this is good for people who want to bring their kids back to school. This is all good and all of these things are to be expected. Portal shutting down, long lines, confusion.

To me, let's just table all of the complaining about this stuff and really focus on the things that matter. Let's give it a week or so to settle everyone in and see how it goes. I gave that same message to my son when he was complaining last night about different things and classes. I just feel like we all have to take a breath and not just to start complaining.

Brian Lehrer: Keeping the big picture in her sights and her feet on the ground, Marie in Brooklyn. Thank you very much for that. Let's see what Carl in Park Slope with another report from the drop-off front lines has to say. Hi, Carl. You're on WNYC.

Carl: Hey, how are you? I dropped my kids off today at their elementary school and there were no lines, it was just a large mass of people all pressed against each other, trying to get their kids in through the gate. I just found that there was the person that was in charge of it. They could have had a megaphone or a bullhorn, you couldn't hear what they were saying. It was horribly organized. I know that we've all worked hard to try to keep our kids safe. They've had all summer to plan this out and I just am surprised that there was so little thought put into how they would actually organize this process of getting the kids in.

Brian Lehrer: Was it also joyful, the kids coming together on the first morning this morning? You heard the last caller who said, let's keep these day-one glitches, website portals, chaos at the front door on the first day after being remote for a year and a half, let's keep these things in perspective.

Carl: Oh, I totally understand that and I think that it was great and there was a lot of joy going on, but it made me think of the airports when people were trying to return from Europe and it had a quality to it of disorganization that could easily have been avoided.

Brian Lehrer: Carl, thank you very much. Let's go to Miriam in Brooklyn, more reports from drop-off. Hi, Miriam.

Miriam: Hi. Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my phone call. I'm reporting from Clinton Hill, an underserved school, an underserved neighborhood. Fort Green Prep, which is a middle school co-located with an elementary school, PS 46. The kids were happy. The auditorium with the sixth new sixth graders was filled up with kids, they were safely distanced so that was all good. Then I had to pass through PS 20, and just to answer the father who was talking before me, in front of PS 20, what the staff did, they put the six feet dot, colored dot, and then there is not- there isn't a big mess of people waiting for the line to go and it goes really smoothly. That was the case last year and that was the case this morning.

Then I went to Boerum Hill to a high school drop-off which is co-located with a charter school and a middle school. There was a big line and the kids were-- That was Boerum Hill School of International Studies. There was a big line but they were safely distanced. We're happy to have our kids going back to school, Brian, because having my-- My girl is going to 11th grade, and having her in remote last year took a big toll on all of us. Going from your bed literally to your desk and from the desk to the bed, it's not a good thing for our kids. We are all working, parent volunteers, staff, school, DOE, everybody's working to make it work and to make it safe for our kids.

Brian Lehrer: Miriam, thank you very much. Hassani in Brooklyn, You're on WNYC. Hi, Hassani.

Hassani: Good morning, Brian. I did drop off I think at the same school as your previous scholar who said he thought it was chaotic. The way that that school is structured, it's very difficult to- but anyway, I thought that it was great. I can just say my child is a fifth-grader and this is his last year at that elementary school. He has been remote for basically a year and a half. We are excited for him to be back in school and that trump's everything I do. They are taking temperatures, they do have protocols in place. I went to that school first, and then my daughter's in middle school and Crown Heights, and that school, they did the same thing, temperature. They have several points of entry though, to have the various different schools. It's a sixth through 12th-grade school. My daughter was remote for most of the year and then they had summer school this summer and it was her first time in the classroom and it just trumps everything I can tell you. I do believe that-- We didn't catch COVID. My daughter got her first shot. She's 12 now, and this being in person in school is more important than I feel like the overall risk. I feel like the schools and the DOE are making some protocols and putting protocols in place to make sure that we can keep our kids in school.

I would say that as one of your previous callers says, we have to keep the big picture in focus and that is making sure that our kids have everything that they need in order to succeed. I'm happy to send my children in person in school and it has been a great day so far.

Brian Lehrer: Hassani, I'm curious if any of your parent friends or colleagues are considering participating in the so-called school safety strike or feel strongly that there should be a remote option for parents who may make a different decision than you or may feel differently about the risks. Is it a thing or is it not a thing in your community as far as you're aware?

Hassani: I am a woman of Black heritage and so I have not found that to be the case. I have not found that anyone in my cohort or any of my moms' groups or any of the parents are talking about not sending their kids or having apprehensions. None of my friends are and none of the people that I know in my building or walking to school have shared anything like that so far.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much for your call. Please call us again. One more in this set. John in Teaneck, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hi, Brian. How are you? We actually kept our kids home last year because we had the choice. They never went in. My wife and I are divorcing and this year after our oldest graduated, we decided to move the younger one to Teaneck where I am in the high school. The high school completely redid their ventilation system and they have mask mandates and I'm pretty sure there's a vaccine requirement, but it seemed that everyone was on board with that for the most part anyway.

We're comfortable doing this mostly because online schooling was substandard to say the absolute minimum and we actually considered, and I guess it's still a possibility because under COVID, nothing's for sure, everything is possible and everything's a contingency, that we might actually end up doing homeschooling if they shut down. If we go back to remote, I'm not really sure what we're going to do. We don't want to homeschool, let me be clear about that. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: If there are outbreaks. You don't want what?

John: We don't want to homeschool.

Brian Lehrer: You don't want to homeschool, that's clear. John, thank you very much. Well, a lot of these callers have been on the same theme. They're happy that school is back in person and they're not seeing a lot of resistance to that in their communities. Let me take the one caller that we have on the board, just so we can respect diverse perspectives, the one caller we have on the board who is calling in support of an at-home remote option and it's Dawn in Brooklyn. Dawn, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Dawn: Hi, how are you, Brian? Yes, I'm calling because considering that our new case numbers are what they were in April, and considering that 25% I believe of new cases are children, how can we send children to school who cannot be vaccinated, especially with schools that don't have proper ventilation or have scaffolding around the school, or have windows that don't open all the way? I know they've been working on it but I'm very doubtful. There seems to be a wait-and-see cycle. Let's try it out. I don't want my child to be involved in that trial.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Dawn. Thank you very much. This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. A few minutes left with WNYC's Jessica Gould, education reporter covering the New York City public schools, and education reporter Carly Sitrin from POLITICO New Jersey. Jess, I always say when we take a lot of calls on the same question, it's an informal, unofficial, and thoroughly unscientific poll. However, I find it interesting that with all the media debate about a remote option, almost every call was a parent saying, "I'm just so glad my kids are in school, and I don't see a lot of opposition to that in my community."

Jessica Gould: Yes. I agree. I thought it was really interesting too. I think the point about keeping the big picture in mind that it's great for kids to be in school and nearly a million kids are returning to the city public schools. It's important to keep that in mind and hopefully, all of the precautions that the city has put in place from social distancing to improvements to ventilation, to testing, all of which have issues and there's criticism of how some of that is being done, but hopefully, it will work and kids will be back in school after an extremely difficult year and a half.

Brian Lehrer: To the last caller who raises a very understandable concern about kid safety when kids below 12 cannot get vaccinated. Here is Mayor de Blasio's response to that when I asked him basically that question on Friday's show.

Mayor de Blasio: I think we're different than almost anywhere in terms of the rigor that's been brought to the equation, but that said, in Summer Rising, Brian, the whole summer, big program, well over 200,000 kids, we had two school closures the whole summer. Yes, we may have some, and in that case, the entire school would go so remote and continue on for that quarantine period. I think that's going to be a rarity based on what we're seeing now.

Brian Lehrer: Jess, that's almost a response to the final caller, but can you fact check that? He's hanging the no remote option for individual families in no small measure on the experience in summer school, the summer, which of course just ended, where he says 200,000 kids and only two schools had outbreaks that required closure. Is that a good indicator? Is it even an accurate stat?

Jessica Gould: It's true according to their numbers that only two school buildings closed over Summer Rising, but there were classroom closures and quite a few of them. If a kid or an adult tests positive, then the entire unvaccinated population has to go remote, and that's the rule going forward. I think also with Summer Rising, it started in July when our numbers were lower and things were looking optimistic, and then we had the rise of the Delta variant. I think how it plays out with Delta is an open question, but the mayor often says that because of the precautions in place even before so much of the population was vaccinated, schools were safe.

There were very few outbreaks where schools were seen as the source of spread last year and now we have the vaccination on top of that as a precaution. Hopefully, that will make it safer going forward.

Brian Lehrer: Carly Sitrin, I was speaking to one New Jersey teacher recently who was actually quarantined five times in the last school year, so says the teacher, for outbreaks in the particular school, and New Jersey has like 600 school districts. New York listeners may not realize that. How much is Governor Murphy mandating statewide and how much is he leaving it up to individual districts?

Carly Sitrin: Throughout the entirety of this pandemic, Murphy has really been pushing the local control message and saying that all of these 600-plus school districts pretty much have what he's been saying, flexibility to make their own decisions around a lot of this. Now, some stuff does come down at the state level and there are Department of Health guidelines, but what some teachers told me too is there has been either some fudging of the numbers or the way districts have been tracking things like in-school transmission, last year they didn't count cases caught during extracurricular activities. If a bunch of kids caught COVID playing soccer at the school, after school, that wasn't considered in-school transmission because it wasn't inside in a classroom during school hours.

This year, teachers have warned that because of the CDC really strict guidance about close contact, saying that if it was under 15 minutes and both students were masked, then it doesn't count. I think there is some concern that numbers have been kept artificially low in that sense. I think there's a just question and there's been a lot of concern that states and that Department of Education officials really be honest with parents, with teachers, and with community members about how the disease is spreading and where that's happening

Brian Lehrer: To the headline of your article on POLITICO, COVID Turning New Jersey's Nonpartisan School Boards Into Political Lightning Rods, you even mentioned in that piece that the Republican candidate for governor, Jack Ciattarelli, turned a Toms River school board meeting into a campaign event. What happened there?

Carly Sitrin: Yes, we're really seeing the politics around school board meetings reaching a boiling point. Ciattarelli showed up to a Toms River school board meeting, which he had sent out campaign emails to folks saying, "I'm going to appear at this board meeting to introduce my plan for school funding," but that's not what he did. He appeared at the board meeting and talked broadly about mask mandates and whether or not masks are effective, and it really rubbed a lot of people, the wrong way.

These school boards are supposed to be nonpartisan bodies that don't have control over things like mask and vaccine mandates. That's in the governor's hands with his executive orders, and so there was a sense of don't come politically posturing at my school board meeting, but at the same time, school board meetings have always been political in a sense, and they've always been a really easy access point for a lot of folks in the community to come and share the way they feel about things that are happening in the state. There's concern is this too much or is this just historically the way it's always gone?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. One last thing, Jessica, and I'll say to Carly's last point that we didn't even really get in this segment into the mask mandate aspects of back to school, which is huge in its own right. We'll do that in another segment. Jessica, here on day one in the city, the UFT says it supports the vaccine rules for teachers, but I see it also joined a lawsuit with other city workers on Friday over Mayor de Blasio's in-person requirement for all city workers which also takes effect today. What's the teacher's aspect of that?

Jessica Gould: Well, the UFT, the teachers' union joined the other unions in a lawsuit questioning the legality of the vaccine mandate. They also went to arbitration with the city over two things, what happens if you refuse the vaccine and what accommodations could be made for people who don't either say that their religion objects to the vaccine or they have a medical accommodation.

What happened was, the arbitrator came down on Friday night, so really close to the start of school, outlining some very narrow medical accommodations that you can have for not getting the vaccine, and also religious exemptions except that it says that if your religious leaders have supported the vaccine, then you don't qualify for religious exemption. That's a lot of religions because a lot of religious leaders have come out in support. Now, if you refuse the vaccine, you can either get severance and leave, or you can be on unpaid leave and continue your health insurance. That was the outcome of the arbitration.

Brian Lehrer: Can you name any particular rigid religions that as a religion are against the vaccine requirements that people can name?

Jessica Gould: I can't. When I went to an anti-vax rally, there were definitely people there who were saying that it conflicted with Catholicism, which of course, leaders in the Catholic community and Jewish community have come out in support of the vaccine. I can't name any and I think that's going to make it hard for people to get the religious exemption, but the concern is now with these accommodations or severance and unpaid leave, there may be a shakeup in staffing a couple of weeks after the school year starts.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, maybe as an addendum to the segment, any of you might tweet us what actual religion, especially since the requirement here that Jessica was just describing is that in order to get a religious exemption, this catch has to be based on your personal religious beliefs against vaccination for whatever reason. It has to be an actual religion and you have to basically get a note from somebody in the clergy.

Who can name a religion where that actually applies? I guess there must be them since people are fighting so hard for that exemption. Tweet @BrianLehrer if you can tell us what religions this applies to. Just tweet, no phone calls on this because we're going on to our next things, but tweet @Brian Lehrer if you know any of those religions. Meanwhile, we thank WNYC education reporter, Jessica Gold, and POLITICO New Jersey education reporter, Carly Sitrin. Thank you both.

Carly Sitrin: Thanks.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.

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